Please, keep these instructions up-to-date if you make changes! The point
here is to be descriptive, not prescriptive, so feel free to streamline or
otherwise make changes, but update this document accordingly!

A GPG key. If the key you want to use is not your default signing key, you’ll
need to add -uyou@example.com to every GPG signing command below, where
you@example.com is the email address associated with the key you want to
use.

An install of some required Python packages:

$ python -m pip install wheel twine

Access to Django’s record on PyPI. Create a file with your credentials:

A few items need to be taken care of before even beginning the release process.
This stuff starts about a week before the release; most of it can be done
any time leading up to the actual release:

If this is a security release, send out pre-notification one week before
the release. The template for that email and a list of the recipients are in
the private django-security GitHub wiki. BCC the pre-notification
recipients. Sign the email with the key you’ll use for the release and
include CVE IDs (requested with Vendor:
djangoproject, Product: django) and patches for each issue being fixed.
Also, notify django-announce of the upcoming
security release.

As the release approaches, watch Trac to make sure no release blockers
are left for the upcoming release.

Check with the other committers to make sure they don’t have any
uncommitted changes for the release.

Proofread the release notes, including looking at the online
version to catch any broken links or reST errors, and make sure the
release notes contain the correct date.

Double-check that the release notes mention deprecation timelines
for any APIs noted as deprecated, and that they mention any changes
in Python version support.

Double-check that the release notes index has a link to the notes
for the new release; this will be in docs/releases/index.txt.

If this is a feature release, ensure translations from Transifex have been
integrated. This is typically done by a separate translation’s manager
rather than the releaser, but here are the steps. Provided you have an
account on Transifex:

$ python scripts/manage_translations.py fetch

and then commit the changed/added files (both .po and .mo). Sometimes there
are validation errors which need to be debugged, so avoid doing this task
immediately before a release is needed.

Check Jenkins is green for the version(s) you’re putting out. You
probably shouldn’t issue a release until it’s green.

A release always begins from a release branch, so you should make sure
you’re on a stable branch and up-to-date. For example:

$ git checkout stable/1.5.x
$ git pull

If this is a security release, merge the appropriate patches from
django-security. Rebase these patches as necessary to make each one a
plain commit on the release branch rather than a merge commit. To ensure
this, merge them with the --ff-only flag; for example:

$ git checkout stable/1.5.x
$ git merge --ff-only security/1.5.x

(This assumes security/1.5.x is a branch in the django-security repo
containing the necessary security patches for the next release in the 1.5
series.)

If git refuses to merge with --ff-only, switch to the security-patch
branch and rebase it on the branch you are about to merge it into (gitcheckoutsecurity/1.5.x;gitrebasestable/1.5.x) and then switch back and
do the merge. Make sure the commit message for each security fix explains
that the commit is a security fix and that an announcement will follow
(example security commit).

For a feature release, remove the UNDERDEVELOPMENT header at the
top of the release notes and add the release date on the next line. For a
patch release, replace *UnderDevelopment* with the release date. Make
this change on all branches where the release notes for a particular version
are located.

This file contains MD5, SHA1, and SHA256 checksums for the source-code
tarball and wheel files of Django <<VERSION>>, released <<DATE>>.
To use this file, you will need a working install of PGP or other
compatible public-key encryption software. You will also need to have
the Django release manager's public key in your keyring; this key has
the ID ``XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX`` and can be imported from the MIT
keyserver. For example, if using the open-source GNU Privacy Guard
implementation of PGP:
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-key XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Once the key is imported, verify this file::
gpg --verify <<THIS FILENAME>>
Once you have verified this file, you can use normal MD5, SHA1, or SHA256
checksumming applications to generate the checksums of the Django
package and compare them to the checksums listed below.
Release packages:
=================
https://www.djangoproject.com/m/releases/<<RELEASE TAR.GZ FILENAME>>
https://www.djangoproject.com/m/releases/<<RELEASE WHL FILENAME>>
MD5 checksums:
==============
<<MD5SUM>> <<RELEASE TAR.GZ FILENAME>>
<<MD5SUM>> <<RELEASE WHL FILENAME>>
SHA1 checksums:
===============
<<SHA1SUM>> <<RELEASE TAR.GZ FILENAME>>
<<SHA1SUM>> <<RELEASE WHL FILENAME>>
SHA256 checksums:
=================
<<SHA256SUM>> <<RELEASE TAR.GZ FILENAME>>
<<SHA256SUM>> <<RELEASE WHL FILENAME>>

Sign the checksum file (gpg--clearsign--digest-algoSHA256Django-<version>.checksum.txt). This generates a signed document,
Django-<version>.checksum.txt.asc which you can then verify using gpg--verifyDjango-<version>.checksum.txt.asc.

If you’re issuing multiple releases, repeat these steps for each release.

This just tests that the tarballs are available (i.e. redirects are up) and
that they install correctly, but it’ll catch silly mistakes.

Ask a few people on IRC to verify the checksums by visiting the checksums
file (e.g. https://www.djangoproject.com/m/pgp/Django-1.5b1.checksum.txt)
and following the instructions in it. For bonus points, they can also unpack
the downloaded release tarball and verify that its contents appear to be
correct (proper version numbers, no stray .pyc or other undesirable
files).

Upload the release packages to PyPI (for pre-releases, only upload the wheel
file):

$ twine upload -s dist/*

Go to the Add release page in the admin, enter the new release number
exactly as it appears in the name of the tarball (Django-<version>.tar.gz).
So for example enter “1.5.1” or “1.4c2”, etc. If the release is part of
an LTS branch, mark it so.

If this is the alpha release of a new series, also create a Release object
for the final release, ensuring that the Release date field is blank,
thus marking it as unreleased. For example, when creating the Release
object for 3.1a1, also create 3.1 with the Release date field blank.

Make the blog post announcing the release live.

For a new version release (e.g. 1.5, 1.6), update the default stable version
of the docs by flipping the is_default flag to True on the
appropriate DocumentRelease object in the docs.djangoproject.com
database (this will automatically flip it to False for all
others); you can do this using the site’s admin.

Create new DocumentRelease objects for each language that has an entry
for the previous release. Update djangoproject.com’s robots.docs.txt
file by copying entries from manage_translations.pyrobots_txt from the
current stable branch in the django-docs-translations repository. For
example, when releasing Django 2.2:

If this is a security release, send a separate email to
oss-security@lists.openwall.com. Provide a descriptive subject, for example,
“Django” plus the issue title from the release notes (including CVE ID). The
message body should include the vulnerability details, for example, the
announcement blog post text. Include a link to the announcement blog post.

Add a link to the blog post in the topic of the #django IRC channel:
/msgchanservTOPIC#djangonewtopicgoeshere.

Update the VERSION tuple in django/__init__.py again,
incrementing to whatever the next expected release will be. For
example, after releasing 1.5.1, update VERSION to
VERSION=(1,5,2,'alpha',0).

Add the release in Trac’s versions list if necessary (and make it the
default by changing the default_version setting in the
code.djangoproject.com’s trac.ini, if it’s a final release). The new X.Y
version should be added after the alpha release and the default version
should be updated after “dot zero” release.

There are several items to do in the time following the creation of a new
stable branch (often following an alpha release). Some of these tasks don’t
need to be done by the releaser.

Create a new DocumentRelease object in the docs.djangoproject.com
database for the new version’s docs, and update the
docs/fixtures/doc_releases.json JSON fixture, so people without access
to the production DB can still run an up-to-date copy of the docs site.

Create a stub release note for the new feature version. Use the stub from
the previous feature release version or copy the contents from the previous
feature version and delete most of the contents leaving only the headings.

Increase the default PBKDF2 iterations in
django.contrib.auth.hashers.PBKDF2PasswordHasher by about 20%
(pick a round number). Run the tests, and update the 3 failing
hasher tests with the new values. Make sure this gets noted in the
release notes (see the 1.8 release notes for an example).

Remove features that have reached the end of their deprecation cycle. Each
removal should be done in a separate commit for clarity. In the commit
message, add a “refs #XXXX” to the original ticket where the deprecation
began if possible.

Remove ..versionadded::, ..versionadded::, and ..deprecated::
annotations in the documentation from two releases ago. For example, in
Django 1.9, notes for 1.7 will be removed.

Add the new branch to Read the Docs. Since the automatically
generated version names (“stable-A.B.x”) differ from the version names
used in Read the Docs (“A.B.x”), create a ticket requesting the new
version.